


How Not To Write Turians

by AdmiralSakai



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types
Genre: Bad Writing, Guides, Turians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-06-07 09:23:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15216107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdmiralSakai/pseuds/AdmiralSakai
Summary: An essay and writer's guide detailing the problem of "animalization" in turian-focused Mass Effect fanfiction: what it is, why it's bad, and how to avoid it in your own work. Rated T due to relatively frank discussion of the smuttier side of the fandom. Comments, critique, discussion and debate welcomed.





	1. Introduction

Very roughly, the first two chapters here are the 'essay', the last two the 'writer's guide'. If you already have a good idea of what animalization is and are just looking for tips on how to avoid it, feel free to skip directly to Chapter Three or Four.

* * *

**What is Turian Animalization?**

Animalization isn't really an English word, at least not to my knowledge. I made it up for the purposes of talking about a trope in _Mass Effect_ fanfiction where writers describe turian characters- and the turian species in general- as being, well, _animal-like_.

If you want to get technical, yes, turians _are_ animals, just like humans are- they certainly aren't plants or fungi or whatever- but that's not what I'm talking about. Using legalese, I'd probably characterize animalization as the portrayal of turian physiology, psychology, or culture in a manner that ascribes to turians traits found in non-intelligent animals as opposed to intelligent beings. But legalese always trades comprehensibility for specificity, so that's probably not very helpful. Instead, think of animalization as anything a writer has a turian character- or turian culture in general- do that seems savage, primal, and/or predatory. It's making them act on instincts and emotion instead of reason, anything that seems backward or primitive, and it can take a lot of different forms.

Is there a 'fic where turians are built like armor-plated predatory cats, with razor-sharp claws and the ability to follow scent trails like a bloodhound and a tendency to growl when angry? Animalization. Is there a 'fic where turian pair-bonding involves the male biting the female on the neck after she goes into heat, and from then on they are physically only capable of mating with one another? Animalization again. Is there a 'fic where turian soldiers are organized into Legions and go into battle with a war chant and challenge their fellows to close combat for the right to command or to win the hand of a mate? That's animalization too.

Really, the best _intuitive_ way to describe it is that animalization is something- or a collection of small, harmless somethings all added up- where if a group of humans suddenly started doing it on Earth, the 911 calls or newspaper editorials would very probably end up using some variant of the phrase "acting like a wild animal". It sounds like a weirdly specific thing to look out for, and it _is_ \- to me, at least, that makes the fact that this exact same pattern is so _widespread_ in so many different stories all the more concerning.

As a side note, there's already an English word for something very much like this: _atavism_. But that's less user-friendly, and more to the point it implies some sort of internal genesis within the ativist. In-universe, I would have no problem describing animalized turians as atavistic, but _out_ -of-universe, in the world of fanfiction where this guide is intended to be read and put into practice, I would say the story's _writer_ was animalizing them.

**An Aside: Physiological Versus Cultural Animalization**

It's not a hard-and-fast distinction and there is necessarily some overlap, but oftentimes it is useful to break up animalization into a physiological and cultural component.

Physiological animalization involves anything done to turian anatomy or behavior on a personal level that makes them more reliant on instinct or other biological causes of behavior, or makes them more 'predatory' or 'savage' in appearance and mannerism- it makes an individual turian, in isolation or in interaction with other characters, look or act more similarly to an actual wild animal.

Cultural animalization involves anything from turian-turian social interactions to the policies of the Hierarchy as a whole. Sometimes it makes turian societies "work" like social, pack-based animals like wolves; other times it draws influence from very early human societies like the Spartans or Romans- not so much _animal_ as _tribal_ , but the backwardness is still there.

Of the three examples presented above, the first two are mostly physiological, and the last is mostly cultural.

**But Why** _**Turians** _ **?**

If you're asking why this guide is about turians, it's partially because I'm a shameless turian fanboy who reads and writes mostly turian-centric stories, so that is the form of animalization I am most familiar with. But it's also because turians are the species animalization seems to disproportionately _target_ in _Mass Effect_ fanfiction. You never hear about _salarians_ challenging each other to hand-to-hand combat over a female in heat, now do you?

**Ok, So Why** _ **Does Animalization Disproportionately Target**_ **Turians?**

The short answer is, I have no idea.

The long answer is that several people in communities I've discussed the issue with (mostly on Library of the Damned) have floated theories about why:

I initially suspected that it was because Bioware did a lot less to _develop_ turian physiology and culture than they did for many of the other races and mediocre fanthors filled in the gaps with inferior product, but now I'm not so sure.

A lot of the worst animalization occurs in Shepard-Garrus "romance" 'fics and the theory has been floated that the writers of these things just find animalized turians _sexier_ (which has some rather uncomfortable implications on its own), but its hard to separate out that trend from those 'fics increased focus on turian... urmm... _anatomy_ in general.

An anonymous commenter here suggested that Saren Arterius's freakout in the beginning of _Mass Effect 1_ may have had a hand in this portrayal.

A few people have also proposed that it's just because turians are one of the more physiologically alien species in _Mass Effect_ and have the added bonus of being physically _bigger_ than humans, so people just naturally assume that they are monsters.

On the cultural angle, people have thrown out everything from the turians' pseudo-Latin naming conventions making authors think they must be 'ancient' to authors assuming that any culture with a militaristic bent must be the Sangheili or the Klingons, to authors confusing and misinterpreting canonical statements about how 'you'll only see a turian's back when he's dead' into their entire society being the Spartans or whatever.

I really don't think there's a good way to disambiguate all of these theories, and I suspect that what is going on is a mixture of a lot of _different_ things that vary from story to story and author to author. I do not, however, suppose that in the grand scheme of things it really matters. We can go over and over and over possible reasons why animalization exists, but the fact is it _does_. And that is a problem.


	2. Why Is Animalization Bad?

It's an interesting question, for reasons that aren't necessarily immediately apparent. Sometimes awareness of a trend in fanfiction spreads faster than people can question why they are coming down so hard on it. You'll find a million reviewers out there who are quick to call a character- rightly or wrongly- a Mary Sue, and for each of those reviewers you'll find two dozen authors who, when accused -rightly or wrongly- of having _written_ a Mary Sue will deny it to their final breath. But how many of those people can give you a coherent answer as to why a Mary Sue is worth getting worked up about in the first place?

To help address this, I thought it would be a good idea to devote some time to explaining exactly _why_ animalization is something _Mass Effect_ writers should be concerned about, starting from the simplest reasons and ending with the most serious:

* * *

**Animalization Is A Shitty Thing To Do To A Person Or Society:**

...in fact, a disturbing number of the animalizing elements employed on turians fit right into the terrestrial racist's playbook when applied to other humans. There is a very good reason for this. Animalization makes turians seem backward, brutish, impulsive, and stupid; it makes them slaves of instinct instead of being able to chart their own path, and just in general makes interaction with them difficult and counterproductive for other, more civilized species. If the turians were a made-to-hate species like how people often portray the batarians I would still be knocking it as a cheap fill-in for actual villain characterization, but as it stands it simply baffles me that people claim to be fans of turians and their culture, and then portray both in such an immensely unflattering light.

**Animalization Invites Gary Stus:**

There are two sides to this.

The first is that animalizing authors often give turians an absurd number of physiological advantages to make them more "predator-like" or "warrior-like" or whatever: ultra-sharp talons, super strength, super senses, plating that can stop small-arms fire, and so on. This is classic Stu-race stuff here, about which others have written to no end. If you give your protagonists unbalanced, overpowered physiological advantages they didn't have to _earn_ , you have a problem- _especially_ if those physiological advantages are being used as a substitute for culture and character.

The somewhat more indirect route to creating Stus comes from the fact that animalization short-circuits a lot of character development and allows turian characters to get away with things they really probably shouldn't. I'll discuss this in more depth two sections down, but for now: Stus and Large Ham behavior go hand in hand, to the degree that a _very_ good measure for Stuness turns out to be just how much property they can destroy once they 'fly into a rage'. Stus are horny, stupid, overemotional, and unnecessarily brutal- all of which in turn are signs and symptoms of animalization. More than that, though, animalization gives characters a pass for this sort of behavior in-universe. If it's a part of turian culture, well, the galaxy at large _has_ to accept it, because we see turians walking around everywhere we go on the Citadel. Outside the narrative, though, a Stu race is still a Stu race... even more so _because_ they rely on exploiting their place in canon to make other characters accept their antics.

**Animalization Is Incongruent With Canon**

There's no two ways around it- the typical hyperaggressive, insanely traditional animalized turian simply doesn't _fit_ with what we see of the species in canon. Turians _don't_ fly into a rage when provoked- everything we see of them shows that they are tightly disciplined and extremely professional. Just look at Garrus Vakarian- even as a cowboy cop, he rarely if ever raises his voice for any reason other than to make himself heard in a tense firefight. The only turian who _ever_ shows actual rage is Saren Arterius in one scene at the beginning of _Mass Effect 1_ , and he's not only clearly out of his mind but also barely able to qualify as biologically a turian to begin with.

Their society has a highly complex civil bureaucracy based on meritocracy and the rule of law. They built an interstellar empire all on its own, producing engineers and scientists who developed faster-than-light travel along with all of the other technologies from steam power to nuclear fusion required to build up to that point. They have- and have had for thousands of years- mass media, mass production, and sophisticated medicine. They are able to remain on friendly terms with the _definitely_ civilized asari and salarians, sending diplomats to negotiate on their behalf and conforming to sapient-rights conventions that no doubt would present issue with the more brutal practices animalizing authors tend to invent. _None_ of this suggests ativism or a barbaric, warrior culture- in fact, the existence of the Hierarchy as a citadel power alongside the other 'modern' races does a lot to contradict it.

Writers are, of course, welcome to reinterpret the source material however they choose. Lord knows I've never been one to let canon get in the way of a good story. But doing so in an animalistic way creates a replacement race that just doesn't _feel_ like turians any more.

**Animalization Destroys** **Characterization**

Perhaps the biggest and most important problem with animalization is that it both closes off avenues for writing characters and acts as a crutch in _place_ of good character development for lazy writers. Think about the Garrus-Shepard romance in canon- it's a complex interplay of friendship, camaraderie, and old-fashioned attraction. Then replace all of that with "Garrus is in heat so he suddenly needs to hump something." Think about the tension of his mission for revenge against Sidonis. And imagine that instead, he wouldn't listen to reason and just jumped into that club and tried to claw Sidonis's throat out. And that Shepard and everyone else saw no problem with this, because That's What Turians Do.

The real problem is that animalized turians are _simple_. They operate, ultimately, on instinct and aggression with a thin veneer of Bronze Age custom overtop, and that just doesn't leave a lot for a writer to _work_ with in terms of complex motivations or interesting angles.


	3. Animalizing Tropes To Look Out For

This is probably the "meat" of the writer's guide, or at least the mashed potatoes- everything I've found applied to turians in animalizing 'fics (although, to avoid incendiary responses, I won't be naming names). It's also important to note that this list is neither exhaustive nor conclusive. Most of these items _can be fine_ if they are portrayed properly and used in moderation- I've used a fair number of them myself, and seen no problem with them, and you could probably get away with a good ten or fifteen and be fine depending on what they are; some of them even make a fair bit of sense and a story could seem odd _without_ them. At the same time, just because nothing you did or are thinking of doing shows up on this list doesn't mean you're 100% free from any risk of animalization and can do whatever you want.

Animalization isn't a check-list, it's a state of mind, and these items are intended less to list the necessary symptoms than to provide a sense of the underlying problem that is hard to put into words. But addressing that is a whole other section.

Essentially, this takes the form of a giant nitpicky list, but it is not intended to be used as such. It's intended as a way to develop an intuitive sense of animalization and start thinking "what do all of these things tend to have in common". Some are more important or egregious than others, but I've not given them point values because, again, not a checklist.

I have opted not to name the names of specific 'fics where I found this stuff because I don't want to be accused of inciting some sort of mob. You all know who you are.

The list currently stands at Revision 7.

* * *

**1\. Giving turians ridiculously sharp talons.  
** This is very common, and I personally do not put a lot of stock into it. How could turians use tools if they cut everything they touched to ribbons? However, it only really becomes a problem if they start using those talons to go all Freddy Kreuger on everyone, especially in non-combat situations or if just a gun or combat knife would be more appropriate. Having them deliberately blunt their talons or making the talons retractable and only extended in life-or-death situations really helps; the big issue is having those talons _used_ inappropriately in situations where 'shredding' would not normally be considered a reasonable response.

**2\. Giving turians ridiculously durable plating, or making them otherwise tougher than is reasonable for a humanoid.  
** This is directly contradicted by the ME1 codex, not that that stops many authors.

**3\. Making turians' spurs, the edges of their plates, or other random bits extremely sharp, or making the plates themselves extremely rough.  
** The general rule for this sort of entry is, if you find yourself spending more than a sentence at most to make a Thing out of it in-story, it is probably excessive.

**4\. Calling turian skin "hide", and/or making it much thicker or more durable than human skin.**

**5\. Giving turians a very powerful sense of smell.**

**6\. Making turians rumble, roar, growl, or otherwise produce animal sounds alongside or in place of other ways of expressing emotion.  
** Stuff like purring or chirping jumps out much less, but can still get weird. Additionally, any species with vocal cords complex enough to produce structured language can no doubt make a reasonable approximation of these sounds, or just say "grrr", _if the situation calls for it_. This is about making them a frequent, inherent part of turian communication and expression.

**7\. Making the turian language reminiscent of or composed of the sounds described in #6; having humans be unable to speak it and/or turians be unable to speak human languages.**  
To some degree this is inevitable. Any species with a different mouth structure is going to be able to produce phonemes others can't. But is it possible for humans to even _approximate_ them and be understood? And are those phonemes just odd sounds, or what a human would identify as sounds animals in particular make?

**8\. Making turians hyper-emotional, particularly being quick to anger or arousal; giving them Large Ham behavior such as suddenly pouncing on and beating people who make them mad.  
** As mentioned previously, there is exactly one instance where a turian breaks composure, and that is Saren Arterius at the beginning of _Mass Effect 1._ Otherwise, _universally_ , they keep an extremely tight rein on their emotions and when they do lash out, do so in a very cold, premeditated, careful manner (think Garrus tracking down Sidonis in _Mass Effect 2_ ).

**9\. Having turian sexual attraction be mediated by pheromones, some sort of magic fertility radar, or other physiological processes; as opposed to compatible personalities and surface sex characteristics that could be readily observed.  
** As a general rule of thumb, if it wouldn't be possible for an alien who spends a lot of time with turians to learn how to evaluate a characteristic as effectively as a turian would, it is 'fertility radar' and not a surface characteristic.

**10\. Making turians (almost always males) "mark" their mates in some visible way.  
** A single bite on the neck or shoulder is most common, which raises questions about how the scarring from such an event could possibly be that permanent. Sometimes the mark-ee refuses to cover it with clothing or is not allowed to, despite the fact that no turian in the Mass Effect games is ever seen with such a mark and they are never seen _without_ clothing that covers the area the mark would supposedly go.

**11\. Making pair-bonding a physiological process as opposed to a cultural/personal one; possibly involving special pheromones or "marking" as in #10, and possibly altering the "magic radar" behavior discussed in #9.  
** Some people go so far as to have sex equal bonding, which begs the question of how Garrus's one-night stand as mentioned in his romance dialogue could have happened. LotD and FanFiction member BatJamags termed this "permabonding".

**12\. Making turian pair-bonds so strong that if one member of a pair dies, the other is caused to fly into some sort of frenzy or even just die outright.**  
DarkDanny first brought this to my attention targeting quarians, but I have seen it affect turians as well; he coined (or at least passed on) the term "soul bonding" to describe it. Sometimes the soul bond is so strong, the surviving mate doesn't even have to be _told_ the other has died but instead just _knows_ the moment it happens. Sometimes this happens instantaneously over interstellar distances, implying that pair-bonding is superluminal and nonlocal!

**13\. Giving turians a "heat cycle" that makes them uncontrollably hornier and/or essentially** ** _forces_** **them to mate or pair bond, possibly by intensifying the physiological "magic signals" discussed in #9.  
** Many, many animals do have fertility cycles that can affect their sex drive, including humans. But for humans it is not noticeable without careful statistical analysis.

**14\. Giving turians limited or no ability to resist physiological urges- typically sexual, but also parental or protective drives, hunger, etc.**

**15\. Making turian sex heavily and/or universally dominance-submission oriented.  
** Similar to #3, the general rule for this sort of entry is that if you find yourself spending more than a sentence at most to make a Thing out of it in-story, it is probably excessive.

**16\. Making turian sex universally "rough" or painful, or having turians be universally aroused by pain.  
** This also covers situations where turians wouldn't be in pain while mating with _each other_ , but a human partner would be- depending on the 'fic this may result in a requirement to "be careful", or the turian in question just not caring and the human getting off on it anyway. Recall that turian skin and plating are not super-durable.

**17\. Making turian sex involve heavy amounts of biting,** ** _especially_** **if it's hard enough to draw blood.  
**  
 **18\. Making turian tongues "rough".** ****  
For whatever reason, authors always use _that exact word_. It's a bit frightening.  
In this case by "rough" we mean in texture, not in the sense of #16. Although if it shows up in a 'romance' 'fic, it may very well be both at the same time.  
Some terrestrial birds do have barbs or other rough structures on the forward sections of their tongues, but others (specifically birds of prey) do not, and when we see Garrus's tongue flop out of his mouth at the end of his recovery mission in ME2, it _appears_ smooth and shiny.

**19.** **Giving turians odd or oversized genitals, or including features like knots or ridges.**  
This is almost entirely restricted to Garrus in Shekarian 'fics and can get extremely scary _extremely_ quickly, especially when the author doesn't have a good idea of how 'vanilla' sex works to begin with.  
There's a difference between making turian reproductive anatomy different from that of humans' (which makes sense, as they _are_ aliens), and making them resemble something that the local "adult superstore" keeps behind the counter and will only sell you if you ask for it by name.

**20\. Making turians show their throats as a submissive or 'come hither' gesture.  
** I actually think this makes a lot of sense, especially in combination with a _not_ -hard-enough-to-do-any-real-damage version of #15. That patch of skin on a turian's throat looks like the only substantial place on their upper body where there's no plating, so it stands to reason it could be quite sensitive. Some 'fics take this in weird directions, though, especially playing up the submissive angle. The throat _might be_ an erogenous zone; it is _definitely_ not something any turian needs to worry about another _actually ripping out_ in day-to-day interaction.

**21\. Making turians regurgitate food to feed their children.  
** While they may physically have this ability, that doesn't mean they actively use it- especially when preprocessed food or simply a _blender_ would be available. Interestingly, in terrestrial birds the tongue barbs described in #18 serve to _prevent_ regurgitation in many species where they exist.

**22\. Having turian couples build 'nests' for themselves and/or their children.  
** Giving them some sort of vaguely nest-shaped furniture is one thing, but oftentimes the 'nest' is made up of just random accumulated objects or some specific biological material and the compulsion to build it is instinctive.

**23\. Giving turian culture strict sex roles or otherwise heavily institutionalized sexism.  
** The question of where all the female turians _went_ throughout 99% of the trilogy's playtime is something every writer needs to answer in his or her own way, and is beyond the scope of this guide. I, personally, have seen the best results in stories that either indicate (in defiance of that bizarre episode in the ME3 Omega DLC) that turians are not strongly sexually dimorphic and therefore females have been around us, unnoticed, the whole time; or simply retcon them in. I suppose a story _could_ come up with a plausible reason why turian females are rarely if ever seen beyond Palaven, but obviously a prospective author would have to approach that sort of decision very, _very_ carefully. I don't want to say don't ever do it no matter the circumstances, but you probably shouldn't ever do it no matter the circumstances.

**24.** **Causing _all_ female turians to consistently display specific negative personality traits.  
**Being overly proud, jealous, or vain is most common, but sometimes they are shown to be mindlessly aggressive and other times weirdly submissive. I don't know whether it's because authors perceive them as a potential competitor for Garrus's affections, so that authors can feel better about subjecting them to the absurd levels of sexism animalization typically entails, or _what_ exactly, but it's _creepy as fuck_ and often results in an odd situation where male turians, _en masse_ , prefer human women over their own species.

**25\. Making turian culture, language, and/or behavior heavily focused on hunting, packs, or other predator-inspired constructions.**  
There is an entire section in the following chapter that addresses predators, carnivores, and the implications thereof, but for the purposes of the list: some mention of predatory metaphors or concepts is certainly fine, _when appropriate_ (or even _in_ appropriate). Humans do that all the time, especially in military or paramilitary contexts. But while some humans might go so far as to describe themselves in a predatory light, it's not a formative component of most human cultures and very few people seriously consider predation to be an ingrained element of human psychology.  
Note that there are some biologists who consider humans to be apex predators precisely _because_ their technologic civilization makes it much harder for any animal to kill them than vice versa. I don't have strong feelings on this naming convention one way or the other, but since the distinction here between animal-type predation and technologic predation is important, I will be restricting the meaning of 'predator' to more traditional pack, ambush, or pursuit predators.

**26\. Giving the turian legal system excessive or barbaric punishments, such as the death penalty for relatively minor offenses or bizarre methods of torture/execution.**  
This is explicitly contradicted by the _Mass Effect 1_ codex (not that many authors care), which states that the Turian Hierarchy has no single uniform legal code, most infractions are handled by a turian's superiors in the form of interventions, and the maximum sentence mentioned is a lifetime of hard labor.

**27\. Giving turians convoluted clan/family structures with patriarchs, approvals for marriages, carefully-maintained bloodlines, and other elements more at home in the Old Testament than a spacefaring society.**

**28\. Giving turians "houses", nobility, or other hereditary or title-based constructs, as a part of their government or alongside it.**  
The ME1 codex is fairly clear on the concept that the Turian Hierarchy is a meritocracy where advancement through society is determined by non-hereditary military and civilian citizenship tiers. Based on similar military rank structures and civilian bureaucracies in governments on Earth, it is likely that higher tiers receive not a great deal much more pay or fancy accoutrements than lower tiers. While it _is_ possible to present monarchies in a more modern light (look at Britain and the United Arab Emirates for two very different examples), I find that such things still clash tonally with the rest of what we see of turian society, and more to the point that's not what most authors _do_ \- they go full King Arthur with courts and chambermaids and all sorts of regency romance tropes.

**29\. Having turians speak in an archaic or overly formal manner.  
** There's two dimensions to this- one involves just making turians speak in a way that no modern person ever would, sometimes even verging on straight-up Ye Butchr'de Olde Englishe territory. The other involves making them speak in a way that is properly formal in setting where it would not be appropriate- Sparatus is of course going to speak more formally when debating policy in Council sessions, but that doesn't mean he or any other turian talks like that _all_ the time.

**30\. Making up "turian" words that are actually just Latin with few or no changes.  
** This is on the list because the connotations of Latin as an ancient language _can_ make its overuse cause turian culture to seem archaic, but it's something I look out for to begin with because it's just _lazy writing_.

**31\. Claiming that the turian language has no word for "love".  
** I see this line a fair bit too and I'm wondering where it actually _comes_ from. Presumably one person originated it because it repeats _exactly_ , but I have no idea who, where, or _why_. It also seems rather _implausible_ to me that turians could both have developed as an organized society on their own _and_ interacted with other Citadel species like the asari for so long that they don't at least have a rough equivalent or loanword. I mean, there probably isn't a word that has an exact one-to-one mapping to the English 'love', but that doesn't mean a whole lot- look at Greek, with its "eros"/"agape"/"philos" distinction- and we _know_ they have words for closely related concepts like attraction and pair-bonding.

**32\. Focusing excessively on oaths and other ritualized displays of honor as opposed to a personal moral code.  
** They probably don't think highly of individuals who go back on a promise, but there's a difference between simply taking betrayals seriously and approaching the subject in a ritualized or even superstitious manner.

**33\. Causing the turian military to rely on essentially Antebellum tactics.**

**34\. Conflating a "not one step back" unwillingness to retreat while defending a valuable objective with the idea that turian soldiers will not take basic defensive measures or make tactical withdrawals from worthless objectives.**  
Being well-disciplined is not the same thing as keeping to excessively rigid formations, taking no steps to avoid or remove threats that are heading _directly at you_ , or (as RandomRockets put it) charging directly into gunfire like idiots.  
While I'm sure turian forces _would_ make suicidal charges or stand around without cover under heavy enemy fire _if there was absolutely no other way to accomplish their objective_ , they are not stupid and do care about the lives of their men. (That, and generally taking the stupid option is _not_ the only or best way to accomplish an objective- there's a difference between a suicide mission accomplished with standard modern tactics and just being suicidally old-fashioned, in that the former is much more likely to actually _work_.)  
To make a long story short, the song is called ' _To Die For A Cause_ ' and not ' _To Die For No Reason Whatsoever_ '.

**35\. Giving the turian military outdated unit structures such as legions or centuries.**  
This- like the throat thing- is another borderline case, and typically doesn't stand out unless other elements of turian military practice are made more archaic as well. There are somewhat legitimate reasons for it, not in the least because presumably those names are _translations_ and as a result are picked as best fits from a wider pool without a lot of thought to their connotations- but that is not an excuse to be lazy and use archaic or historical terms when more modern ones are available and would work just as well.

**36\. Making sparring and physical combat heavily ritualized or ceremonial.  
** There's a difference between making sparring _structured_ in the sense of having _rules_ like a contact sport, and making it ritualized. As a general rule of thumb, rules relate to the actual functioning of the match and have a clear reason for existing; ceremonies relate at most symbolically and wouldn't really change the outcome if they were altered or removed. Having participants wear protective gear or assigning point values to different strikes would be good examples of the former (Archangel1207 developed a good system), while requiring participants to recite some sort of oath at the beginning of a match or requiring specific decorations of some kind nearby would be examples of the latter.

**37\. Giving the turian military a reliance on sparring and physical combat (especially heavily ritualized as in #32) as a means of not just "blowing off steam" but resolving command decisions such as promotions.**  
There's kind of a grey area here involving interpersonal issues with two different approaches that are difficult to pin down objectively. I think the best way to draw the line is that sparring shouldn't be connected to other specific, cultural institutions (i.e. things that are written down in a book of laws somewhere) as opposed to a unique interpersonal dynamic confined to two or more participants. The basic idea is that "You two don't seem to like each other and it's affecting unit performance. Go work it out in the ring" is fine, but "whoever wins the most matches hath the right to first pick of bondmates" is not.  
Note that reasonable exceptions can be made for institutional things that obviously _do_ relate to sparring- it would make sense, for instance, for a turian's performance in matches to affect her hand-to-hand combat certification.

**38\. Having advancement through the turian military determined by displays of physical prowess and bravery, and not tactical insight or administrative ability.  
** In basically all modern militaries, the soldiers who wade through enemy fire and come back with a handful of trophies do not make General. Assuming they pass their psych evaluation, they are given a bunch of medals and top out at Master Chief Petty Officer at the absolute highest.

**39\. Confining turian scientists, engineers, and other non-military occupations to very low positions in society, or suggesting that they are 'dishonorable'.  
** Even the goddamn _krogan_ know to treat their eggheads right. There's turian scientists on Noveria and the Citadel, and Lorik Qui'in is a successful businessman. None of them give any indication of being rejects from turian culture or the Hierarchy, and other characters specifically mention that Qui'in still holds to it.

* * *

And, finally, most importantly:

**_40\. Attributing turian cultural or psychological traits to instincts or direct results of their biology, as opposed to an interplay of biology, history, environment, and other factors.  
_ ** _In scientific circles, this is often called 'reductionism', and is disturbingly common._

****_41\. Using superlative adjectives like 'primal', 'feral', or 'savage' to describe the actions of turian characters._  
_This is kind of a no-brainer, really. But people keep doing it anyway.  
_


	4. Advice For Writing Turians Well

It is very, _very_ tempting to use the list in the previous chapter as the definitive guide to avoiding animalization in your story. And, indeed, if you scrupulously avoid doing any of the things above you will avoid a lot of the red flags that I and other critics on sites like the Library Of The Damned use to see if a 'fic we've just skimmed is bad enough to bother reading in depth. But there's more to it than that.

I cannot stress enough that the list is a _guideline_ , just like the Mary Sue litmus tests that surface from time to time. Just because you wrote _around_ the specific symptoms a list has picked up doesn't mean your story is free of the underlying problem- and, at the same time, if your story does indeed hit a few things on the list but _deals with them intelligently_ then it is probably going to be much more thoughtful, well-developed, and all around interesting to read than if you scrupulously purged anything possibly objectionable. So, instead of assigning point values to the entries up above, here are a few things to think about:

* * *

**Be Cautious About Using Terrestrial Animal Models**

I suspect that a lot of otherwise very good writers who take the time to do research and try to build up additional physiology and culture for turians fall into animalization because they model the species too closely on real, terrestrial animals about which more information is available. This is a legitimate scientific method used commonly in paleontology and astrobiology, but it needs to be adjusted when the creature you are trying to predict more about is 1) _alien_ and 2) _intelligent_.

Turians have some traits resembling raptors and other predatory birds, certainly. But they are _not_ the same thing. They're an extraterrestrial species that evolved on a completely different planet and are not, in fact, related to Earth's raptors in any way shape or form. They are just as likely have traits found in literally any other Earth species, or not even found on Earth at all.

More importantly, turians are sapient. That means that their bodies and brains have had to change to accommodate complex tool use, language, and a _host_ of other things that, in known terrestrial biology, exist only in _humans_ and not raptors. Any attempt to model turians using terrestrial species as a guide therefore should consider not just birds or dinosaurs but humans as well, and most importantly it should consider _which traits could plausibly survive into a complex technological society and which would die out well before the turian species discovered fire_.

These changes could be huge- humans and bonobos, our closest living biological relatives, share 98% to 99.4% of our genetic makeup, but we could not be more different in terms of physiology or behavior. We call animalistic traits animalistic because non-intelligent Earth animals display them and humans typically don't, so it's _exactly_ as reasonable to assume that those traits would be dropped in the evolution of turians as it is to assume turians _retained_ traits found in Earth raptors.

**Be Cautious About Using Terrestrial Cultural Models**

What we see of turian culture and governance is _very_ alien, but that doesn't stop authors from trying to find historical Earth cultures to use as models. Just like with animal models there is nothing _wrong_ with this- and in fact it needs less concern over a naive application devolving into animalization. But animalizing authors often draw exclusively from very ancient cultures (particularly the Romans, probably because of the turian pseudo-Latin naming conventions), and even authors who don't do this deliberately need to be conscious of the fact that historical cultures all share the common element of _being in the past_. It gets exponentially more obvious as one moves further back from the 20th century, but to some degree it's always there.

Historical cultures didn't _have_ space travel, or reliable medical care, or mass media, and if those things are added obviously the way those cultures operated would change drastically. Some of them might have been progressive or not in their day, but as they go further back in history more and more things become products not of the cultures themselves but of the time they existed in: when these cultures are transplanted onto Palaven without making adjustments they come across as backward and anachronistic. This is completely at odds with the modern, technologic nature of the Turian Hierarchy we see in the games- they didn't become a galactic superpower with Iron Age tactics or economics.

Generally when looking for inspiration from historical cultures, I would suggest not just looking at what seems special about that culture from a modern eye, or even what they themselves considered to be most important, but what made them different from their contemporaries and neighbors. The elements that are the same are likely products of the time or region- they are not what you are looking for. It's the _differences_ that are probably worth carrying over.

**Remember That There Is A Difference Between Carnivores And Predators**

I, personally, think that it's very likely turians do prefer or even require a meat-heavy diet- just look at those teeth! But whatever direction you as a writer decide to take their dietary habits, it's important to remember that agriculture is _very_ important in the development of advanced civilization. On the basic level of energy in versus energy out, anything larger or more complex than a small village simply can't be sustained on hunting and gathering alone.

In humans, the earliest adoption of agriculture was between ten and fifteen thousand years ago, and only three thousand years later did the first cities of Sumer develop. Would aliens follow the same trajectory? We have no way of knowing, because humans are still our only example. But I don't see any reason why a roughly humanoid species with a roughly similar culture would not follow a roughly similar evolution, and if that's the case then turians stopped hunting and started ranching in the _very_ distant past. They might be carnivores, but they certainly wouldn't be predators any more than humans are. That's my take on the issue, anyway.

**Seek Balance In All Things**

It's _very_ difficult to say whether evolutionary processes actually keep constant any sort of "powerfulness" attribute, whether a species gaining one ability must necessarily lose another of somehow "equal value". These things are, in the real world, extremely difficult to quantify and study.

However, in fiction, being "underpowered" or "overpowered" ("OP", for short) are fairly well-defined concepts that every writer should be aware of. The terms are more common in tabletop RPGs where characters actually have numerical stats for things like strength and endurance, but the concepts apply just as well in narrative writing when the hard numbers are taken away. The problems with OPness are, again, somewhat beyond the scope of this guide, but a short version of one issue is that if a character is too strong in too many areas, they can only either win in a way that is unearned and boring, or lose through contrived authorial fiat.

How does this relate to animalization? Well, as much as they make for crappy characters in a literary sense, animalized turians are _almost always_ OP when it comes to their actual physiology. They might do a terrible job of showing it, but at least in theory they're a species intelligent enough to have invented interstellar flight- and yet, they're _also_ as strong/fast/perceptive/whatnot as wild, predatory animals that _don't_ have that intelligence. The animalized turians don't want a piece of the ability pie, they just take the whole thing.

Introducing limitations on turian physiology (and actually thinking through them) does a lot to keep animalization at bay. In mechanical terms they _gained_ something when they became an intelligent species... so think about what traits of animals they may have _lost_.

As a general rule, try to keep turians and humans (and the other Citadel races) roughly physically equal with each other overall- turians might have, say, sharper senses and quicker reflexes than humans, but would be less durable and tire more quickly. It's generally not a good idea to make these gains and losses too extreme, as just in general that causes situations where one species is completely incapable of doing some things and utterly trounces everyone at others, and that can make it very hard to write about those groups interacting in a shared setting.

**Moderation Goes A Long Way**

There's a matter of degree to everything. Just like typos, stilted dialogue, or scientific errors, an otherwise good story can feature some animalizing elements and not be crushed under the weight of them. A lot of the entries on the list, on their own, aren't even animalizing at all. Just in general I'd say the best way to approach the problem of animalization while writing is to be aware of it, but don't stress out about it.

**So Does Good Writing**

Probably the best way to avoid animalization in a story is simply to learn to write well- _structurally_ well, not just putting the right words together to form a sentence. If your turian characters have complex personalities and motivations, they won't need to lapse into fits of rage just to move the plot forward; if your relationships have actual chemistry, you won't need to rely on pheromones and heat cycles; if your culture has development and depth that allows it to stand on its own you won't need to create a carbon copy of 3rd-century Rome; and if you can write a Garrus-Shepard love scene tastefully there is no need to fill up space listing characters' pain thresholds and rely on 'instinct' to move things along. I have never seen a 'fic succeed on the merits of writing in spite of rampant animalization, but at the same time I have never had an otherwise good 'fic leave a bad taste in my mouth _because_ of rampant animalization. It's just another thing to think about.

Good luck, and happy writing.

-AdmiralSakai

Special thanks to Serketry for contributing his invaluable knowledge of all things biological, and to HerrWozzek and the entire Library of the Damned community for supporting my venture and supplying me with some of the worst literary offenders for study.


End file.
